On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 11:17:51AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > [Severity set as important, because the lack of a requirement can > have serious implications, including security ones.]
> Configuration is sometimes represented in another way than contents > of a configuration file, e.g. a set of symbolic links. However there > is absolutely no reason to regard such information as less important > than the contents of a configuration file. This is particularly true > for 10.7.3, e.g. the Debian policy should require that local changes > in symbolic links (or whatever that can represent a configuration) > must be preserved during an upgrade. > An example is bug 412159 that is not regarded as a release-critical > bug though one of the settings is not preserved, because the > corresponding configuration is represented by a symbolic link > somewhere in /etc. > Note: though in this bug, the lost configuration is just one bit of > information, this is still annoying, and in general, symbolic links > can also represent much more information and possibly configuration > related to security/privacy settings. Policy requires that packages preserve local changes to *configuration files*. What you're asking for is that packages be required unconditionally to preserve *application behavior*. This is not a reasonable standard to set in policy. Package behavior changes whenever upstream changes the built-in defaults; it changes whenever a new version of an unmodified conffile is installed; it changes whenever a config file is upgraded with ucf; it changes when Debian packagers make adjustments to try to better integrate with the operating system. In the case of bug #412159 I agree it's a bug to delete a symlink that the user has created by hand. But I don't see any realistic way to enforce this through policy; nor do I think the impact of the bug is so severe that it needs to be enforced in policy. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
